(no subject)

[johnpalmer]

New updates at ForTheDream, asking the question "what would you be thinking about, if you were the President, the day after the 9/11 attacks? Osama bin Ladin? Or some two-bit dictator who was nothing but an annoyance to us?"

Comments

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Well, if the latter is extending his hand in alliance to the former, as some evidence suggests, I might be intensely interested in both of them at once, lest we drive those guys straight from Afghanistan to Iraq. Especially if the two-bit dictator once tried to kill my dad.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Well, on 9/11, there wasn't any belief that there was any real connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Remember, Clarke had been trying to get President Bush to pay attention to AQ for a while... if there'd been a meaningful Iraq connection, I think he'd have pumped it already, if only because of the assassination attempt. If you want resources, making it personal is a good ploy.

While I know Clarke has been savaged by some, he was trusted enough to run the response on 9/11, and trusted enough to make the call to send the bin Ladin family home. So, if he says that the intelligence community's CW was "no real connection between Iraq and AQ", I think he can be trusted.

The only explanation I can come up with for Bush thinking of Iraq on 9/12 is that he'd already decided that he'd invade Iraq if he was given a chance. Without Iraq already occupying a good bit of his thoughts, I can't imagine anything penetrating his mind at the time; he was dealing with the worst terrorist attacks in US history.

And I'm not exactly horrified by the thought that he was gunning for Saddam from the getgo. But I think it shows that Iraq was not the next, obvious, reasonable step in the GWOT... it was on his plate already.